[jongjong]

I'm guessing the purpose of the CIA is to produce information which leads to political actions that yield financial benefits for the country while the purpose of INR is to produce accurate information without concern for financial benefits. The fact that the government thought it needed 2 organizations to do what is supposed to be the same job shows that neither organization is doing the full job properly. It's almost like they need 2 versions of the 'truth' so that they can weigh up convenient half-truths against inconvenient whole truths.

[ghaff]

That's a reasonable cynical take on it. Another is that different organizations have different biases, incentives, historical perspectives, and so forth. So it's reasonable to consider different points of view.

[jajko]

By that logic, 10 is always better than 2, so they are still seriously lacking balanced info

[ghaff]

Maybe 10 is better than 2 if there's some independence of data gathering and perspectives. In general, though, at least a couple of different takes is probably valuable--assuming they're bringing at least some diversity of experience.